


Kinda, Sorta

by TwinIvoryElephants



Category: The Boy Who Could Fly (1986)
Genre: 1980s, High School, Period-Typical Ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25035376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinIvoryElephants/pseuds/TwinIvoryElephants
Summary: The student body of William Howard Taft High School ponders the strangeness of Eric Gibb, Milly Michaelson, and the two of them together.
Relationships: Eric Gibb/Milly Michaelson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Kinda, Sorta

**Author's Note:**

> Tried something different this time around and went for more of a third-person-omniscient perspective. Enjoy!

Everyone at William Howard Taft High School kinda, sorta knew about Eric Gibb.

Or, at least, they made believe that they knew. It was easy for students to make half-hearted connections when, while rushing to third period chemistry class, they saw Eric in the hall. It’s easy to zero in, even just in passing, at the protective way Mrs. Sherman hovered over him. It’s easy to note the stiff, dazed way he bends over to drink from the water fountain, as if he’d never done it before in his life—how he put just enough pressure on the button to make the water flow, but _only_ just, as if his mind was busy with something else—how his eyes were always staring blankly ahead or up in the corner of the room, like a cat staring fixedly at dust motes—how Mrs. Sherman had to clutch at his shirtsleeve, or button the top button on his shirt, or adjust the hood on his sweatshirt so it wasn’t falling over his shoulder, because God knows he wouldn’t do it himself. 

The students knew Eric’s condition by names, some kinder than others. They didn’t know the word “autistic.” What they did know were words like “slow” and “retard,” words that were easy to jeer and throw around as if they were the dirtiest of insults. They used phrases like “he’s so stupid, he must ride the short bus” when someone failed a test, and called one another “spastic” when they tripped over the last stair.

There were no short buses at Taft; there weren't enough eligible disabled students in the area to warrant one, for most of them were shipped off to special schools or mental institutions. If there was a short bus that dropped students off at Taft, Eric would be the only passenger. 

Nor were there any physically handicapped students who might object, even only inwardly, to the casual use of the word “spastic,” for the doorways at Taft weren’t wheelchair-accessible. Students who required more than the use of crutches were out of luck.

Only a few—usually girls—minced around with terms like “mentally challenged” or the more clinical “mentally retarded,” always said in a hushed voice. That didn’t stop them from giggling, though, when they knew for sure that the subject of their conversation was out of earshot.

Eric was never bothered by his peers’ whispers, the snickers behind his back, mostly because the student population at Taft did their best to keep it under control. They may be petty, but they’re not animals, they’d insist if you asked. They never make fun of Eric to his face. Some didn’t want to hurt Eric’s feelings—for they sensed he _did_ have them, even if it didn’t seem like he did—but most students knew that if they were caught making fun of him, they’d get detention and probably have to apologize.

And to apologize to Eric’s blank face would be just too humiliating, because that sort of thing required that Eric understand fully what was happening—which he couldn’t, the students assumed. At least, not _really_. Not in the more or less seamless way they all could understand one another, through halting words, chilly silences, folded-up notes, and—if you were lucky—the occasional shared plate of cheese fries on the quad during lunch, anyway.

Even taking jabs at Eric Gibb grew old by the time the first weeks of school passed. The students grew used to his presence in the hallways, dogged as always by Mrs. Sherman or the occasional other teacher tasked with babysitting him between class periods, and the omnipresent _rat-tat-tat_ sounds of his paper airplanes hitting the opposite wall of his desk during English. It was easier to ignore him once his odd behavior had lost its novelty; there were only so many times one could giggle to your friends about his airplane fixation or the strange way he walked before starting to feel a little self-conscious.

A little less than two weeks into September, Amelia Michaelson arrived at Taft. This was no big thing in itself—Milly herself was completely ordinary, in most students’ opinions. A bit shy, some thought. She rarely spoke up in class, except occasionally in Mr. Rodriguez’s freshman biology course, and was sometimes caught reading a science-fiction book during lunch instead of talking to other people. She scurried around the halls, a textbook wallflower. Invisible. 

Occasionally, though, when looking out the window or walking alone in the halls, a student might notice a strange, vulnerable look in her eyes. The look spoke of a vague clinging, an unwillingness to adapt, of feeling small and young in the vast halls that would encompass the supposed best years of her life. It was a look that cried out, pitiful and lonely, _I don’t belong here_.

Most students didn’t feel like they belonged, either, of course, but it wasn’t alright to express it so openly. And whenever a student approached Milly, her eyes seemed to glaze over, her posture stiffened, and her expression approached something akin to a polite, rigid mask. Any vulnerability was switched off, replaced by vague politeness and, more than that, a kind of sullen annoyance for having been interrupted in her melancholia. Any potentially friendly student was brushed off quickly. Thus, Milly continued to be a friendless non-entity, another face in the crowd. For all the students knew (or cared), that was how she liked it.

Then, she started hanging out with Eric, and the student population’s interest in Amelia Michaelson grew. Who was this quiet girl with the Star of David necklace, who toyed with her hair while writing notes in class and didn’t seem to have any friends? Who talked quietly but assuredly to Eric in phys ed, who seemed content to read to him in the back of Mrs. Sherman’s class, who ate lunch with him on the school lawn while everyone else in the student body talked and laughed so easily with one another?

This interest in the conundrum of Milly and Eric’s relationship wasn’t widespread or intense, by any means. They were a curiosity, something to momentarily ogle at or gossip about in the halls between classes. The students at Taft High were utterly aware of the podunk nature of their town, and the fact that the new girl at school was hanging out with Taft’s only special-ed student was at least worthy of note, if only somewhat so.

It was easy to get caught up in a whirlwind of speculation about the nature of their relationship—whether Milly was getting extra credits for spending time with him, whether she was Mrs. Sherman’s pet, whether she and Eric had found some freaky way to communicate independent of a grasp on the English language. Most kids were happy to write both of them off as being “crazy,” the pleasantly jangled nomenclature that had room for any odd blend of emotion. Eventually, the well dried up, and things got boring. And it wasn't like Milly or Eric were going to tell them anything, anyway.

They kept to themselves, those two. They seemed happy that way. A month after they started hanging out, students noticed a new brightness in Eric’s eyes, a sway to his gait. He seemed more animated, more clingy—instead of Mrs. Sherman, it was Milly who walked with him into their English and phys ed classes, him dogging at her heels or walking side by side. They held hands sometimes in the halls, a fact that was fawned over by some sentimental girls and mocked by others. A litany of comments followed their travels down the hallways, overlapping like waves on a restless ocean:

“If he can’t talk, how can they be in a relationship?”

“Oh, it’s so cute. Look at them! Eric’s in love—”

“What does she see in him?”

“—some Freudian thing for sure—”

“—like a little kid. It’s so _wrong_.”

“Shut up, it’s cute….”

“You think they, like, do it? Screw?”

“Shh, omigod, they’re _right there_! And _gross_ , Daniel!”

Often, Milly would turn beet-red at some particularly off-color comment, causing some students to feel sympathetic and ignore them—for her sake, if not Eric’s. Others weren’t so kind. The way they saw it, she deserved all the jabs. If you hang with the school outcast, you get treated like you do—and if you didn’t want the talk to follow you, just stop. It was just that simple. It was impossible, in a lot of students’ eyes, to fathom why Milly wouldn't simply stop risking the embarrassment. What could a normal girl like her get out of talking to a guy like him, anyway, outside of a few extra credits?

Some students in her English class might’ve had an inkling. When the bell rang and everyone started packing up, Milly got up from the table she was working with Eric at, slung her bag over her shoulder, and looked toward the front of the room. Occasionally, if a student were looking at exactly the right time, just as she was turning her gaze from the table behind her to the chalkboard in front, they’d see a pink flush of excitement spread on her cheeks and a sparkle in her blue-green eyes. They’d see someone thrilled by some wonderful secret known only to her. Soon, that look would be flushed away by the same careful look of placidity Milly often wore. But that look would stick in those students’ minds, because they had never seen Milly appear that way before. She looked happy. Radiantly happy, like she’d witnessed something spectacular, like she was cracking some sort of code.

Like all the secrets causing her sadness were rapidly unfolding, leaving only bright relief in its wake.

It was a look that seemed almost like love. 


End file.
